Page 1 of 2

Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:45 pm
by shpalman

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:24 am
by Martin_B
IIRC, in The Other Place there was a link to a study in America that domestic violence increased noticeably in cities in the 12 hours after their team lost a game (I think football, but it could have been other sports, too).

I'm not sure I've seen anything about increases in domestic violence if a side wins; but that might be more to do with increased alcohol consumption from celebrating.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:49 am
by JQH
Drunkenness, racism and violence are English cultural problems generally. There's lots of it on display from the Med to South East Asia most years with not a football match in sight. So although the violence may be "associated" with football, it is a classic case of correlation not being cause and effect.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:04 am
by Bird on a Fire
Plus I think there's something unusual about the way the English drink and lose control. The amount of vomit and punch-ups and nudity in an English town centre at the weekend is unusual compared to other places I've lived, for instance. Those aren't inevitable consequences of alcohol consumption.

I think what's different about sport is that it unites people into groups, so on top of the usual disinhibited drunk English person problem you have the mob mentality problem.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:19 am
by Martin_B
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:04 am
Plus I think there's something unusual about the way the English drink and lose control. The amount of vomit and punch-ups and nudity in an English town centre at the weekend is unusual compared to other places I've lived, for instance. Those aren't inevitable consequences of alcohol consumption.

I think what's different about sport is that it unites people into groups, so on top of the usual disinhibited drunk English person problem you have the mob mentality problem.
Australia has an issue with drinking and violence, too. There are certain areas in Perth and Fremantle where I tend to avoid late on Friday and Saturday nights, and most pubs Sunday during the day. But it's not just an Anglo-Saxon thing, as other ethnic groups also get involved; although I do wonder if that's because they have learned their behaviour from us Brits (or even had to learn to avoid just being targets).

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:20 am
by Allo V Psycho
Strictly anecdotal, but a friend who worked in A and E in Newcastle said they dreaded the team getting beaten, because of the domestic violence victims who turned up afterwards.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:34 am
by Trinucleus
JQH wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:49 am
Drunkenness, racism and violence are English cultural problems generally. There's lots of it on display from the Med to South East Asia most years with not a football match in sight. So although the violence may be "associated" with football, it is a classic case of correlation not being cause and effect.
I've heard the suggestion that because Europeans eat and drink as a family, teenagers learn to drink alcohol from older family members; licensing laws in this country mean that teenagers learn to drink from their teenage mates, who may not set the best example

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:44 am
by IvanV
Similar issues in Nordic countries. It's a surprise to go around a respectable and wealthy-looking Norwegian town of a Sunday morning and find broken glass everywhere. I remember staying in a large campsite near Trondheim one Saturday night and there was violence... Reykjavik is an, um, interesting place of a Friday/Saturday night. It's one of the reasons they make alcohol so extremely expensive in those places.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:11 am
by Bird on a Fire
Some stats from Wikipedia, just on "binge drinking" itself rather than related behaviours, but with references:
The culture of drinking in the UK is markedly different from that of some other European nations. In mainland Europe, alcohol tends to be consumed more slowly over the course of an evening, often accompanied by a restaurant meal. In Scandinavia, occasional bouts of heavy drinking are the norm. In the UK (as well as Ireland), by contrast, alcohol is commonly consumed in rapid binges, leading to more regular instances of severe intoxication. In this way the British combine Northern European volumes of consumption with frequency resembling that of Southern Europe. This "drinking urgency" may have been inspired by traditional pre-midnight pub closing hours in the UK, whereas bars in continental Europe would typically remain open for the entire night. This may have stemmed from the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, emergency legislation dating back to the first world war regulating pub opening times with the intention of getting workers out of the pub and into the munitions factories. Consequently, it was criticised for being draconian and denying the working classes their pleasures. This is one of the reasons for introducing the Licensing Act 2003 which came into effect in England and Wales in 2005, and which allows 24 hour licensing (although not all bars have taken advantage of the change). Some observers, however, believed it would exacerbate the problem.[11]

As of 2008, results have been mixed and inconsistent across the country.[12] Among young people (under 25), binge drinking (and drinking in general) in England appears to have declined since the late 1990s according to the National Health Service.[13][14]

While being drunk (outside of a student context) in mainland Europe is widely viewed as being socially unacceptable,[15] in the UK the reverse is true in many social circles. Particularly amongst young adults, there is often a certain degree of peer pressure to get drunk during a night out.[16] This culture is increasingly becoming viewed by politicians and the media as a serious problem that ought to be tackled, partly due to health reasons, but mostly due to its association with violence and anti-social behaviour.[17]

Using a 5-drink, 30-days definition, British 15–16-year-olds binge drink at a rate of 54%, the fourth highest in Europe, and 46% report intoxication in the past 30 days.[18]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemi ... e_drinking

The section on Malta is interesting - as Martin suggests for Australia, it seems that adoption of British habits has lead to higher drinking rates.

I suspect some of it is related to whether drinking is normally done with food versus going straight to the pub after work for a few pints on an empty stomach.

But volume of booze is only part of the story. It's harder to find stats on generally disinhibited behaviour.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:51 am
by Fishnut
Not quite in the theme of this thread but it feels the best place to put it. This is a great piece on the relationship between football and domestic violence. There's some horrifying statistics, but this part really had me shocked,
So egregious is the enabling and protection of such superstars in Brazil, the BBC claims ”The Brazilian Football Association could likely field an entire team of active players accused or convicted of crimes related to gender violence or sexual assault.”

Perhaps the most egregious: former Flamengo goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes de Souza, who served less than a third of a 22-year sentence for ordering the murder of a former lover, Eliza Samudio, who was strangled and her body chopped up and fed to dogs. Bruno continues to earn a living playing football for Rio Branco in the northern state of Acre.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:53 am
by WFJ
IvanV wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:44 am
Similar issues in Nordic countries. It's a surprise to go around a respectable and wealthy-looking Norwegian town of a Sunday morning and find broken glass everywhere. I remember staying in a large campsite near Trondheim one Saturday night and there was violence... Reykjavik is an, um, interesting place of a Friday/Saturday night. It's one of the reasons they make alcohol so extremely expensive in those places.
Very similar in from Belgium through central Europe to eastern Europe in my experience also. When people talk about drinking culture differences between Britain and continental Europe, I think most have only experienced weekends in Romance-speaking countries.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 11:00 am
by discovolante
WFJ wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:53 am
IvanV wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:44 am
Similar issues in Nordic countries. It's a surprise to go around a respectable and wealthy-looking Norwegian town of a Sunday morning and find broken glass everywhere. I remember staying in a large campsite near Trondheim one Saturday night and there was violence... Reykjavik is an, um, interesting place of a Friday/Saturday night. It's one of the reasons they make alcohol so extremely expensive in those places.
Very similar in from Belgium through central Europe to eastern Europe in my experience also. When people talk about drinking culture differences between Britain and continental Europe, I think most have only experienced weekends in Romance-speaking countries.
Wild speculation but I wonder if table service has any impact at all. I'm certainly not suggesting it's a primary or even significant driver but being under pressure to get rounds in / keep up might be a bit different to just casually ordering another drink when you're ready.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:13 pm
by Bird on a Fire
There's a good report from the WHO on the role of alcohol in interpersonal violence in Europe. http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/p ... E87347.pdf

It doesn't break down all the stats by country. From what they cite, it seems like roughly half of perpetrators of violence and a third of victims have been drinking across countries. But they do say this:
Patterns of consumption also
vary. Countries such as Finland, Sweden; the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation have
high rates of “explosive” drinking patterns, in which alcohol is consumed less frequently but
then drunk to intoxication. Conversely, in southern Europe drinking is more often part of family
life, and alcohol is consumed regularly but moderately as part of a daily diet (10,11).
Interpersonal violence across Europe has an equally varied pattern, with mortality rates (2002)
for assault and homicide (ICD-10 codes X85–Y09) ranging from 0.69 per 100 000 population in
Greece to 29.71 per 100 000 in the Russian Federation (12). The role of alcohol in violence also
varies between countries, with 3.6% of adult male drinkers claiming to have been involved in a
fight after drinking in a survey of Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United
Kingdom, but this ranged from 1.2% in Italy to 7.5% in the United Kingdom (11)
So British drinkers are indeed more likely than or Europeans, romance languages or otherwise, to (admit to) being in a fight. Whether that's because they're actually more violent or because throwing hands after a skinful is more culturally acceptable I wouldn't like to guess.

There's all sorts of interesting cultural factors at play. It's clear that it's acute rather than chronic high consumption that Jesus to violence, but what underpins that? sh.t climates? High cost of eating out? Romance vs Germanic languages (can't think of a mechanism for that one!)?

They do highlight these cultural factors:
Community factors
Levels of alcohol-related violence are influenced by situational factors such as the time of day,
the day of the week and the setting in which alcohol is consumed. In England and Wales in 1999,
most alcohol-related assaults occurred on weekend evenings or nights, and about one third of all
assaults occurred in or around a pub or club (30). Several environmental factors appear to be
especially related to violence occurring in the night-time economy. Drinking venues that are
crowded, have an unpleasant atmosphere (such as hot, noisy and smoky), have competitive
games on the premises and have a permissive attitude towards antisocial behaviour and
drunkenness (such as continuing to serve intoxicated patrons) have a higher risk of experiencing
alcohol-related violence (40). Having greater concentrations of such venues within an area also
increases the risk of interpersonal violence in that area (41). The same is true for premises which
engage in the illegal manufacture and/or sale of alcohol. During sporting events, such as football
matches, alcohol-related violence can also increase in and around both stadiums and drinking
venues where matches are viewed. During the 1998 World Cup, one match (Scotland versus
Brazil) led to a four-fold increase in attendance at an emergency department in Scotland, of
which one third involved violence and more than two thirds involved alcohol (42). However,
cultural influences are also important, as fans in Denmark are renowned for consuming large
amounts of alcohol yet maintaining a cheerful sociability (43).
Societal factors
Cultures in which acute intoxication is found more commonly and is tolerated to a greater extent
within society report the strongest relationship between alcohol and violence. Across 14
European countries (1950–1995), the impact of alcohol on homicide was highest in Norway,
Sweden and Finland (characterized by heavy drinking episodes) and lowest in Mediterranean
countries such as France and Italy, where drinking typically occurs more regularly and
moderately (14). Alcohol-related violence is considered more likely in cultures with expectations
about the disinhibiting effects of alcohol (44), although alcohol can be used to account for, or
excuse, violent behaviour even in countries where alcohol consumption is usually moderate (45).
Most Europeans (95% according to the results of the DAPHNE Programme) believe alcohol to
be a main factor in violence towards women and children (46).
I also thought this was interesting:
A person’s beliefs about the effects of alcohol
also influence the risk of committing alcohol-related violence, with a higher rate of alcohol-
related aggression among people who expect alcohol consumption to increase aggression (36).
I've certainly come across common statements like "Stella makes me violent" or "I always get in a fight after drinking tequila", which are obviously bollocks (and don't seem to persist in Belgium or Mexico respectively), but don't know how many other countries have those kinds of myths. I did hear similar comments in the US.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2021 6:59 pm
by shpalman

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:48 pm
by Boustrophedon
It wasn't always the same. In 1966 my father had agreed to buy a canary from my Mother's cousin and he picked it up after work from him at his work in London, then he realised that he would be on the Tube with all these football supporters and a canary. And as he told it everyone was lovely and those near told those behind to be quiet so as not to frighten the bird.

OK so they were going to the match not afterwards.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:05 am
by jdc
There's some absolutely sickening stuff appearing on twitter tonight. Footage of violence and screenshots of disgusting racist abuse.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:17 am
by jdc
Not sure I want to post the actual content, but this seems a fair summary: https://twitter.com/stevescott_itv/stat ... 6235346946
Racist abuse of Saka, Sancho, Rashford; storming Wembley; violence inside; terrified, crying children; fireworks thrown into crowds (we’ve got video); glass bottles hurled; Wembley Way trashed.

Disgusting and depressing.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:37 am
by El Pollo Diablo
I'd really hoped this stuff wouldn't happen and England were past this. Obviously I was wrong to have so much confidence that we've matured as a country. My apologies.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:52 am
by El Pollo Diablo
I felt bad enough that we'd lost the game, but the totality of the racism, the violence, the fact that we know there'll be an uplift in domestic violence (probably a big one to match the importance of the occasion) and so on just makes me feel grimy and sh.tty and upset.

Last night I had a quick look at twitter hoping to see some magnanimity and good sportsmanship, but mainly there were England fans being c.nts and Italy fans being c.nts. Oh, and a man who tweeted a video of a guy on a flight shouting racist abuse which made me feel sick. And I appreciate twitter is a scummy sh.tty crevice at the best of times but f.cking hell.

Ugh. :(

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:01 am
by TimW
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:13 pm
I also thought this was interesting:
A person’s beliefs about the effects of alcohol
also influence the risk of committing alcohol-related violence, with a higher rate of alcohol-
related aggression among people who expect alcohol consumption to increase aggression (36).
I remember duck (other place) once pointing out to the effect that drunk people continue to do what they think is expected of them, i.e. behaving the way they think drunk people do.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:07 am
by discovolante
It's difficult to think of anything tangible to try and mitigate this right now, especially the physical violence (and also without being a bit white saviour-y) but maybe there's something to be said for being vocal about condemning it, reporting online abuse etc.

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 10:01 am
by Tessa K
I posted this on the Male violence against women thread:

A study in 2014 by academics at Lancaster University looked at the number of reports of abuse to a police force in the north-west of England during three football World Cups. They found that such reports increased by 26% when the national team won or drew, and by 38% when the team lost.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... match-ends

A study published on July 4 from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) found that after the final whistle, domestic abuse incidents grow by 5% every two hours, peaking at about 8.5% more incidents than average ten hours after the game started.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/domestic-viol ... 58119.html

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 10:28 am
by Tessa K
Also, a local woman told me yesterday that a (female) football fan accused her of being an immigrant. She isn't. She's white but she does have dark hair. Is that all it takes now?

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:43 pm
by shpalman
shpalman wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 3:03 pm
Lincoln's Italian business owners excited to be facing England in Euro 2020 final
"I'm born in the south of Italy, in Calabria, but I've lived in Lincoln for most of my life. So this is the perfect final for me because whatever the outcome is, I can't lose."
Vandals trash Italian restaurant after Euro 2020 Final
Ironically, I'm not even Italian

Re: Violence associated with team sports played by other people

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 6:56 pm
by shpalman